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‘Well,’ I says, ‘it’s a rough gang, them two frauds, and I’m
fixed so I got to travel with them a while longer, whether I
want to or not — I druther not tell you why; and if you was
to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws,
and I’d be all right; but there’d be another person that you
don’t know about who’d be in big trouble. Well, we got to
save HIM, hain’t we? Of course. Well, then, we won’t blow
on them.’
Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how
maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them
jailed here, and then leave. But I didn’t want to run the raft
in the daytime without any- body aboard to answer ques-
tions but me; so I didn’t want the plan to begin working till
pretty late to-night. I says:
‘Miss Mary Jane, I’ll tell you what we’ll do, and you won’t
have to stay at Mr. Lothrop’s so long, nuther. How fur is it?’
‘A little short of four miles — right out in the country,
back here.’
‘Well, that ‘ll answer. Now you go along out there, and
lay low till nine or half-past to-night, and then get them to
fetch you home again — tell them you’ve thought of some-
thing. If you get here before eleven put a candle in this
window, and if I don’t turn up wait TILL eleven, and THEN
if I don’t turn up it means I’m gone, and out of the way, and
safe. Then you come out and spread the news around, and
get these beats jailed.’
‘Good,’ she says, ‘I’ll do it.’
‘And if it just happens so that I don’t get away, but get
took up along with them, you must up and say I told you